WWII-era bomber donated to Great Park
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Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times
GATEWAY TO TIMES GONE BY: Sam Allevato of the Great Park Design Studio stands in the doorway of a hangar at the old El Toro Marine base that will house an aviation museum expected to be home to dozens of historic aircraft and memorabilia.
[COLOR=#333333! important]A planned O.C. museum will honor El Toro's history, designers say. A 1943 Lockheed PV-1 Ventura is the first acquisition.[/color]
[COLOR=#999999! important]By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 31, 2008 [/color]
In years past, building a central park was about creating an escape from urban life with little nod to what it was replacing.
But the designers of the Orange County Great Park, which is being built on 1,347 acres of the former El Toro Marine Corps base, are taking a new approach, embracing the site's military past rather than bulldozing it.
Lockheed PV-1 Ventura
click to enlarge
In one such move, the park's board today plans to accept the donation of a World War II-era patrol plane and bomber as the first artifact for an aviation museum expected to feature dozens of historic aircraft and memorabilia.
Great Park board member Bill Kogerman, a retired Marine colonel who flew fighter jets at the base in the 1960s and '70s, said the 1943 Lockheed PV-1 Ventura was "a fairly old and rare acquisition."
The model was used for night flights during World War II, stopping at El Toro on its way to the fighting in the Pacific. It is unclear if this particular plane landed at El Toro.
It is at an airfield in New Orleans after being so severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina that its owner gave it to an insurance company.
Park officials jumped at the opportunity to get the plane, calling it a modest first step toward the museum. But it also is a sign of an emerging focus of the Great Park project: preserving the base's history while undertaking one of the nation's largest public works projects.
"We want to speak to the fact that the military use of the site was actually what kept it from development and made it available," said Ken Smith, the park's landscape architect. "In the end, the park will be richer because people will see interesting ways of adapting historic structures and reusing them."
Central to the park's design is a 1 3/4 -mile-long historical timeline built atop one of the base's original taxiways. Designers also are storing base memorabilia and colorful squadron murals for use in park buildings and museums.
Hangars are slated for restoration as a visitors center and museum site, and a control tower may be converted into a nature center, Smith said.
Thick slabs of runway concrete, dubbed "El Toro stone" by designers, will become stepping stones on trails. Much of the 600 acres of pavement on the base will be ground up and used for landscaping.
Smith said he also is working to preserve two water towers, which could be used to catch rainwater and irrigate some of the 150 acres of citrus trees planned for the park.
The Great Park also has funded an oral history project in which Cal State Fullerton students have begun creating a repository of interviews with El Toro veterans.
Another early manifestation of that dedication to history has been the park's search for airplanes and helicopters with a connection to the Marine base.
Tom O'Hara, curator of the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, was hired as the Great Park's aviation consultant, and now scouts potential acquisitions throughout the country via e-mail and phone.
Early this month, he flew to an airfield outside New Orleans to see the Lockheed PV-1 Ventura. The 65-year-old plane had sustained major hurricane damage. It was missing a door and tires, and it had a hole in one of its wings. But the craft was a find because it is one of only 3,000 made, O'Hara said.
The plane is likely to be the first of many since the park board has set aside $500,000 to start and maintain an aircraft collection. Park designers and architects across the country point to places such as the Great Park as part of a trend to acknowledge the historic background of public places.
Most urban parks in the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as New York's Central Park, aimed to provide escape from overcrowded urban life, at times razing poor neighborhoods and leaving little sign of them. In contrast, contemporary parks have intentionally retained historical elements, reusing them in new and innovative ways.
A runway at Crissy Field, a 100-acre former Army airstrip near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco that reopened as a park in 2001, is now a popular kite-flying spot. An Army photography lab there has been converted into an educational center.
"The tide has really turned from the idea that a park is a blank piece of paper that you do whatever you want on," said Kristina Hill, director of the landscape architecture program at the University of Virginia. "We've realized that people want a greater connection to the past."
In procuring the Great Park's first airplane, O'Hara, the aviation consultant, spared no attention to detail.
The wings and fuselage will be disassembled and loaded onto two wide-load trucks, then driven to Orange County as early as next month, where the plane will be reassembled and restored at the base at a cost of $70,000.
One key adjustment will be trading its light-blue paint job for olive drab.
"The color scheme in those days was not very exotic," O'Hara said. "We want it to be historically accurate."
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WWII-era bomber donated to Great Park
For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman. 
